


It may be so in Denmark

by thedevilchicken



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: (Potentially) Friends to Lovers, Episode Related, F/M, Parallel Universes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-16 14:36:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7272100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When she looks at him sometimes, she thinks: <i>In another life, we might be lovers</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It may be so in Denmark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aurilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/gifts).



> Takes place mid-episode for S2E06, while Vanessa is shopping for clothes with Victor.

When she looks at him sometimes, she thinks: _In another life, we might be lovers_. And so, when the opportunity presents itself, she plays the part quite willingly. 

The good doctor has no concept of how one should shop for women's clothing and Vanessa sees no earthly reason why he should have, when it comes to it; he's seemed to her quite devoid of a woman's touch, metaphorically speaking of course. It's an art she's often hesitant to practice personally, also, as there are so frequently much more pressing matters to which she must attend and the petty fripperies and flatteries of London's fine boutiques don't find a frequent place at the interior of her diary. 

Yet here she is with Dr. Frankenstein - should she call him Victor? She suspects he wouldn't mind - shopping for his cousin who, she's very nearly quite convinced, isn't. It's intriguing, but she's no desire to pry; she suspects that her prying would run him off completely, skittish thing that he is on occasion, now and then.

She holds up dress after dress against herself, skirt after skirt, blouses, jackets, scarves, to demonstrate their shapes and their fabrics to him so that he can make his informed decision. Some patterns are pretty, she thinks, and some demure, some fabrics sumptuously full, some necklines teetering on the brink of scandal. His eyes turn wide at the look of some of them, though she's not sure if he's imagining those items on his 'cousin' or on her. She decides it's better not to ask.

There's a wide smile on her face as she flusters him with ladies' undergarments, not exactly embarrassed but very definitely taken by surprise. For a man of science, for a surgeon with his steady hands who's near definitely seen beneath his female patients' underthings, the ease with which she can surprise him is itself surprising. Perhaps his family taught him women are mysterious, unknowable. Perhaps his connection to the dead is stronger than he finds with the living. She believes she could understand either of those things; the two of them are not so very different, after all.

In the next shop, her implication without saying it is she's his sister, and his gaze is questioning upon her though he doesn't actually speak the words to form that question; they walk together, arm-in-arm, between the mannequins and tailors' dummies, displays of frilly, lacy dresses in polite, light colours, muslins, cottons, here and there a silk. 'Straightforward' seems to be the watchword, 'simple', whereas Vanessa's own wardrobe is hardly that. She wonders, as they walk together, the figure this cousin of Victor's will cut beside him, the fair-haired ingenue he paints her as. Vanessa is hardly that herself. 

In the next shop, the word she implies is _fiancée_ , and she enjoys the blush that spreads at his cheeks though he doesn't correct her; perhaps he learned his lesson in that first shop, where his corrections led the surprised - though discreet - assistant to entirely the wrong conclusion. In the next shop, she lets the woman who greets them think _wife_ , and say _wife_ , say _Mr. and Mrs. Ives_ , and she glances at Victor whose expression is not this time so flustered. He gives her his arm instead, and they progress. 

And then, in the next shop, it's Victor who makes the introduction. His name is Victor Frankenstein, and so the assumption forms: for the afternoon they're _Dr. and Mrs. Frankenstein_ , shopping together for their fair-haired country cousin though this cousin's style does not seem to mesh with theirs at all. She glances at him with a smile that he returns, less formal now, though just by a touch; his upbringing likely made him stiff this way, she thinks, the way hers failed to do. And when she looks at the two of them side by side there in the mirror, pale-skinned in their sombre outfits, they seem to match.

Vanessa is not fond of mirrors. She turns away and Victor frowns. For all their afternoon's levity, there's a reason she feels that white is not her colour and it's not just for her complexion. 

Vanessa is not fond of mirrors. Most often, what she sees there's just what she expects to: she sees herself and the room in which she's standing. However, there are times she gazes into them and sees more than she wishes to. It's not the past or future, though it took her years to figure that fact out. It's not her dreams, though sometimes what she sees does feel quite like it. What she sees are flashes, fragments, slivers of other presents and of other lives, her other selves who are her and who she is but then again she's not. What she sees is real, and happening.

Sometimes she'll see them in a fortune-teller's crystal ball or in a shiny bauble hanging from a Christmas tree, in a pane of rain-wet glass after the storm has broken. Sometimes she'll drop a teacup and she'll see things in every single shard of it, like one universe split into hundreds. Once, she smashed a mirror with her fist and sprinkled what was left all across her bedroom floor to see the other people in it. She sometimes thinks she's going mad. She sometimes thinks that happened long ago.

If she looked into the mirror, she thinks she might find Mina there, not dead at all and happy instead. If she set another and another, one after the other all in a row, then perhaps she'd see Peter, dear Peter, who never went to Africa because he'd caught a fever there in England and had thus survived, or else he came back after, only weakened from his illness. In another, she'd see the white walls of an asylum; in another still she'd see the moors. She'd make a fine cut-wife for the locals there as need one, she thinks from time to time, though that would take her far from life and for all her trials she's not ready to retire just yet. 

Then, in another, she knows that she'd see Victor. He's not unfamiliar to her. 

_In another life, we might be lovers_ , she thinks sometimes when she looks at him. Because, in another life, they are. 

She saw him once, after his mother's death, a devastated little boy. She saw him once, at school, moved away, studious but by then erratic. She sees fragments of men who are him and aren't, divergent at points along his past. She sees a ball where he dances, sees a ball where _they_ dance, where they're smiling, where they're happy in a swirl of taffeta and lace and music. He's an excellent surgeon and she his wife, his excellent assistant. She's a hunter of vampires and he's learned to stand and fight beside her. In one life they're poorer in wealth but no poorer in happiness. In one life, he's come to live with her at Grandage Place, filling the void that was left by the son Sir Malcolm lost and the lover that Vanessa might one day have had. They dance. They both learned when they were young, their stations not so very different.

They shop together, amicable, joking, smiling, and in the end Victor enters into the spirit of it, though she'll admit he seems distracted. So is she, if she's entirely honest, though she makes a pretty mannequin. Then after, they take tea, and as they talk she glances at the back of her silver teaspoon, at the light that reflects in the surface of the liquid in her cup. She dashes one with the other, spoon in tea, disrupting what she saw with ripples. She looks at him and smiles instead. She'd like to tell him she's not always so _completely_ dressed as he imagines, not by any means, and see the look that spreads out on his face, but her mind's elsewhere and so is his. 

In those other lives, she sees the two of them together. She sees their friendship, sees the letters they write that cross continents for one to find the other, how they speak sometimes for days in nothing less than quotes from Shakespeare, making a friendly competition of it. She sees his tutelage, what he teaches her of anatomy and physiology, the naming of the parts of him over his clothes, or over hers, or under them, sees his ticklish laughter as her fingers walk his skin. She sees the way she lifts her skirts for him sometimes, how the touch of his hands on her thighs is less than clinical, how he gasps against her sex. She sees him in her, her hair down loose about her shoulders and his surgeon's fingers all wound up in it. He touches with such care, she thinks, though he knows that she won't break beneath him. Even in their moments of abandon, he couldn't think to hurt her.

But she knows, she knows, there's not one single place in all those lives despite their smiles where she's not touched by darkness. They're never different people in those lives: only circumstances differ. And she knows, she _knows_ , that Victor has a darkness of his own in him. They're so alike. They're damned, the two of them, and somehow hesitant to reach for their salvation. 

In those other lives, she knows his secrets; if she asked him what those secrets are in this one, she thinks that he might tell her, too. She'd like to know, but now is not the time. 

She'd like to know him, as her other selves know his. She'd like to think their maladies could heal each other; she'd like to think two darknesses make light. Perhaps they do, but now is not the time. 

"Thank you, Miss Ives," says Victor once the tea is done, as they say their fond farewells, her gloved hand in his. "I'm in your debt." He's earnest, for once, for one so closed off as he so often is. She'd like to get beneath his skin and see what's hiding under it. She wonders sometimes if her other selves would see.

"My pleasure, Doctor," she replies, and smiles, and he returns it. She turns and walks away, and feels his eyes upon her as she goes.

Her darkness tells her one may smile, and smile, as they have smiled, and yet be a villain, but Victor's not some blackguard libertine who's set to take advantage. In this life, he's her friend, and she's not disappointed for it. This life is not ballrooms, after all. This life is devils, and she's infinitely grateful for his help in keeping them at bay.

When she looks at him sometimes, she thinks: _In another life, we might be lovers_. 

She glances back over her shoulder and she smiles and waves goodbye, which is a gesture he returns. He is not the villain of the piece; if there is one, she thinks perhaps it's her. Perhaps one one day she'll tell him what she sees, and she'll let him decide.

 _In this life_ , she thinks, as she starts for home, _he could be my dearest friend._

And when it's over, then perhaps they'll see.

**Author's Note:**

> The title and paraphrased quote toward the end are (obviously!) from Hamlet: "That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain; At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark".


End file.
